About Me

I'm a recently turned 40-year-old knitter who happens to be a librarian. This means that I have the power to interlibrary loan ANY knitting book that I want. I am the librarian for my knitting guild, which makes me a knitter, a librarian, a librarian for knitters, and a knitting librarian.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Nip and Tuck

I was fairly productive over the Labor Day weekend. One of the projects I've wanted to do for a while was to take my new-found sewing and cutting confidence and put it to work on a vest I made for Brian last year. The pattern was the basketweave vest from the second Jamieson's book, and I followed it correctly and even used the designated yarn. Here's what it looks like in the book:

Notice how wide the shoulders are. Even after blocking, the shoulders stuck way out when Brian put it on, so I wouldn't let him wear it because it made him look like a big dork. I decided that I would rip out the armhole ribbing, cut back the shoulders, and redo the ribbing. He wasn't going to wear the vest the way it was, so if I totally screwed it up it wasn't the end of the world.

I took a vest that I made him that looks nice on him and laid it over the Jamieson's vest:

I then used yarn and roughly hand stitched a line along the edge of the good vest armholes, into the fabric of the green Jamieson's vest (the shaky yellow line - I'm not so hot with the "draw" tool). FYI, the top "good" vest is the Cider House Rules vest from the Fall 2000 IK. I got out the sewing machine and stitched about 3/4 of an inch in from the yarn line I had made (the 3/4 of an inch was to account for the ribbing). I then cut the knitting and reknit the ribbing. It turned out great. I'm very happy. It looks much better on Brian and I'll now allow him to be seen in public with the vest. He noted that I'm more concerned about how the vest looks than how he looks in it. I told him that he is my model for my creations, but I don't know if that helped.

Here's the bamboo convertible shawl in action:

I ended up wearing it with three of the buttons holding it together at my waist in front. I think I may look into using stitch markers (the kind that open) to hold it together. The buttons didn't stay in very well - although I found that they work great if the yarn accidently gets stuck inside the jump ring with the button shanks!